Europe realizes that we are standing on the threshold of this
opportunity, and its eyes are upon us. In spite of trade jealousies, there is
throughout Christendom a new feeling of respect and even admiration for the
republic. Nothing could have indicated this better than the unparalleled flood
of foreign expressions of sorrow, respect and goodwill called out by the assassination.
It was Mr. McKinley’s good fortune to be president at a time when the presidency
of the United States was coming to be of more importance and better known in
the world than ever before, and furthermore, at a time when the nation could
and did give extraordinary proofs of chivalry towards an oppressed neighbor
and magnanimity towards a foreign foe. This course naturally associated itself
in the foreign mind with the personality of the president, and created for him
an exceptionally high regard; the more so, because few of the less attractive
characteristics of any public man can be known outside the immediate range of
our own political affairs. It is an optimistic trait in human character that,
at such a time at least, all the emphasis is placed on the best that was in
a man. In reality, it is the good men do that lives after them; the evil is
“oft interred with their bones.”